I bought mine from Ritz here. I bought another D200 from Adorama here.
Also try Amazon here. Adorama usually has D200/18-70 kits in stock here. It helps me keep adding to this site when you click these links to get yours.

CUSTOM
SETTING MENU

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f1 - f7: CONTROLS

How to Get Here

Press MENU, go to the left and select up and down to the pencil icon. You'll then see CUSTOM SETTING MENU on the color LCD. Click down to f CONTROLS and click to the right.

What it Does

Here lie some of the most important tricks I use on my D200. These change what some of the buttons and knobs do.

What I Change

I change f1, f4 and f5. I leave the rest alone.

f1 Center Button lets you select what happens when you press the center of the rear thumb selector.

You may select different things for shooting and for playback.

In shooting I prefer to have mine select the center AF area.

In playback there is a very clever trick I suggest everyone set:

TRICK: under playback mode, select ZOOM ON/OFF. Now pressing the center of the selector zooms in. I choose MEDIUM.

TRICK OF TRICKS: Once you set this and use it, you may use the rear dial to flip through all the shots at the same position and magnification! I do this all the time.

It's great for selecting which shot is sharp or not. Sadly once you use the Delete key the D200 reverts to non-zoomed mode, so you'll have to zoom and scroll back to the same spot to continue in-camera editing.

f2 Multi-Selector You can set the rear thumb selector to turn on the meter or the AF system.

I never use this.

f3 Photo Info/Playback lets you choose which directions do what on the rear thumb when playing back.

You can select this switch to match Canon or Nikon's convention.

In other words, it's your choice of tapping left and right or up and down to go forwards and back or to see the data about an image.

TRICK: Set FV (flash) Exposure lock. Tap this, the flash goes off and meters itself - once. Now every succeeding shot needs no preflashes! This means that, so long as your distance stays unchanged, that you'll get instant shutter release, and more importantly, no blinking from the preflashes. This choice fires the preflashes only once, and uses that information for every succeeding shot until you reset it.

It resets itself when the meter turns off, or if you tap the Function Button again.

TRICK OF TRICKS: I actually use the FV Lock + Lens Data selection. This does what I described when the flash is on. When the flash is off you can enter manual focus lens data by holding this button and spinning the front and rear dials. If you enter the maximum aperture and focal length you get Matrix metering, Manual and A exposure modes, and full lens and exposure data in the EXIF data!

This is my favorite. See for yourself if you prefer any of the other modes, like flash off and others. Of course if you select any others than you lose the tricks I described.

f5 Command Dials let you change directions of rotation and swap functions between the command dials.

TRICK: You can choose to use these in playback to select among images and data in addition to the thumb switch. I select MENU > CUSTOM SETTING MENU > Controls > f5 > Menus and Playback > ON.

f6 Buttons and Dials lets you tap a button once to adjust instead of having to keep holding it. You can keep adjusting until you tap the shutter, at which time it cancels.

f7 No Memory Card? Prevents me from thinking I'm taking pictures with no memory card! I wouldn't deactivate this safeguard.

If you deactivate this you could think you're shooting while having no card in your camera!

PLUG

My D200 User's Guide continues below.

It took me two months to write this D200 User's Guide. No one pays me anything. If you find it
as helpful as a book you might have had to buy or a workshop you may
have had to take, feel free to help me share more.